Phil Donahue: Best Guest Star?

In the Home of Phil Donahue

 

Phil Donahue guest stars on Marlo’s new webseries “Good Joke”

I know I’ve written about it before, but I’m completely blown away by the home of Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas. This place is, as we say, redonkulous. It was designed in 2009 by famous modern architect Charles Gwathmey.

360 floor to ceiling windows, broad open spaces, blue dappled ceiling resembling sky, wide open rooms with blond pine floors. In the back of our minds we have an idea of the Haves vs the Have Nots, and I often think about my one bedroom apartment in Queens, and how only two of us live there, vs the same apartment downstairs with a family in it.

I think I’m part of the “haves”, but then I travel for a shoot, and realize I’m not. Not even close. I have not been in another private residence in NYC with this amount of space. It’s the size of a house, a nice house, anywhere else in America, except that it’s on top of a 12 story building and over looks Central Park.

I tell you, mind blowing.

But anyway back to Phil Donahue. He’s very nice. He’s got a dry sense of humor. AND he reads off a prompter like the TV veteran he is.

Phil Donahue is a star in his own right, and I don’t think he is eclipsed by Marlo. But I’ve heard tell that there are two camps: Marlo people and Phil Donahue people.

I don’t think I’m in either camp, I’m a Marlo fan having watched That Girl in syndication, and being especially a fan of her father, Danny Thomas, who is one of my heroes. I was a bit to young to want to watch the Phil Donahue show, but I knew who he was. He also took an anti-war stance in 2002, way early on, when it wasn’t popular. He didn’t compromise his values, and he may have been ushered away from MSNBC because of his views.

Needless to say, Phil Donahue is a TV legend in his own right.

Phil Donahue can be seen online with his wife in Good Joke.